WASHINGTON, D.C.-U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Children’s Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act(CHGME), sending the bill to President Obama’s desk for signature. Harkin, Ranking Member Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Committee Members Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) led the effort to reauthorize the CHGME program.
“The CHGME program has been a critical source of support in helping to grow the number of doctors who choose to become general pediatricians and pediatric specialists, training them to provide everything from well-child visits and preventive care to the most complex cardiac surgeries. This bill, now headed to the President’s desk, will invest in children’s hospitals and the programs that help to train the next generation of doctors serving our sons and daughters," Harkin said. “I applaud my colleagues in the Senate and in the House for working together across party lines, once again, on a bill that will improve the public health."
The Children’s Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act supports graduate medical education at about 55 freestanding children’s hospitals around the country and gives children’s health a critical boost by supporting physicians training to become general pediatricians and pediatric specialists. The legislation also makes important changes to the program by giving the Secretary authority to include a small number of freestanding children’s hospitals, such as children’s psychiatric hospitals, that have been ineligible to participate in the past.
The legislation passed the Senate HELP Committee in October and the full Senate in November 2013. It marks the 13th bipartisan HELP Committee bill to go to the President’s desk in the 113th Congress; four more bills have passed the full Senate and are awaiting consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives. A full list of those bills is below:
Signed into law
Passed (or attached to legislation) in the Senate
In addition, two more bipartisan bills have been reported out of the HELP Committee and are awaiting consideration by the full Senate:
